Persona (human-computer interaction)

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A persona (lat. Mask ) is a model from the field of human-computer interaction (MCI). The persona is a prototype for a group of users, with specific characteristics and specific usage behavior.

Personas are used in the requirements management of computer applications. For a planned computer application, it is analyzed which group of users will use this application later. For this purpose, based on observations on real people, some fictitious people are created who are supposed to represent the majority of the later actual users. The application is then designed by the design and development team taking up the needs of these fictional people and playing through different operating scenarios accordingly. It is important to emphasize that personas must correspond to a well-founded database. This database is collected from a multi-stage process of quantitative and, above all, qualitative surveys, observations and user interviews.

Creation

Personas are created using characteristics that have been identified, for example, during interviews with or other observations by potential users of the system. Often times, not just one persona, but several are designed - as many as are necessary to cover the users of the system. Subsequently, however, the primary and secondary personas should be selected from this number of personas.

A persona has the following characteristics:

  • First and last name (fictitious)
  • Photo (to make the persona even more imaginable)

There are also other attributes, depending on their relevance for the system, for example:

  • Activity / job role
  • marital status
  • Age
  • aims
  • Wishes
  • Education / knowledge
  • Computer knowledge
  • Attitude to the product
  • Attitude to the technology of the product
  • Hobbies
  • expectations
  • restrictions

example

The task is to develop a digital photo terminal that is located in a department store and at which users can submit their digital photos on an electronic medium and have them developed.

Our personas:

  • Leni (24): Interested and advanced computer user (word processing and internet), studies business administration and likes to take photos of all of her friends on weekends.
  • Harald (65): Widower and pensioner, received a digital camera from his grandchildren, but does not own a computer and therefore cannot handle it. Nevertheless, he would of course like to print out the pictures he has taken and stick them in his photo album.
  • Sara (43): migrant, speaks and understands hardly any German and is now supposed to develop the photos of her son, who doesn't have the time himself at the moment. But she cannot operate a computer.

These examples for personas make it clear that it is not easy to find a design for the application system that suits the prior knowledge of all users. Aspects can be simplicity, avoidance of cluttered screens, multilingualism and unambiguous texts.

The development team now has to think over and over again during the design process whether the individual people can successfully carry out this or that task.

Application example: Separation of business and private data on mobile devices

In the case of the combined business and private use of mobile devices such as smartphones or tablet PCs in organizations (see also Bring your own device , "BYOD" for short), personas are used to separate the respective data and applications.

Web links

literature

  • Alan Cooper : The Inmates are Running the Asylum. Why High-Tech Product Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. SAMS, Indianapolis, Indiana 1999, chapter 9.
  • Andreas Gebauer, Frederik Thormaehlen: Experience with personas in software development. In: HMD 231 Practice of Business Information Systems. June 2003, pp. 71-78, ISBN 3-89864-203-8
  • John Pruitt, Tamara Adlin: The Persona Lifecycle: A Field Guide for Interaction Designers. Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design. Morgan Kaufmann, 2005, ISBN 978-0-12-566251-2
  • John Pruitt, Tamara Adlin: The Persona Lifecycle. Keeping People in Mind Through Product Design. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, California 2006.
  • S. Mulder, Z. Yaar: The User Is Always Right. A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web. New Riders, Berkeley, California 2007.
  • John Pruitt, Tamara Adlin: Putting Personas to Work: Using Data-Driven Personas to Focus Product Planning, Design, and Development. Sears & Jacko, 2009, pp. 95-120.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Human-Computer-Interaction in Web 2.0.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 392 kB), Institute for Visualization and Interactive Systems, University of Stuttgart@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / cumbia.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de  
  2. ↑ Rex Hartson, Pardha S. Pyla: The UX Book. Morgan Kaufmann, 2012, ISBN 978-0-12-385241-0 , p. 268.
  3. ^ A b Rex Hartson, Pardha S. Pyla: The UX Book. Morgan Kaufmann, 2012, ISBN 978-0-12-385241-0 , p. 269 ff.
  4. ↑ Defining dual-persona MAM (Mobile Application Management): Corporate and personal stuff side-by-side on the same device , Jack Madden, October 26, 2012 (English)
  5. ↑ This is how a Persona mobile app works , accessed on November 9, 2012